


Ashes Into Concrete

by beheadaed, evynyx_pdf, Reynier



Category: Arthurian Literature - Fandom, Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack, Friends to Lovers, Guns, M/M, Mostly for comedy and some for..... well you'll see, Murder, Mutual Pining, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24895933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beheadaed/pseuds/beheadaed, https://archiveofourown.org/users/evynyx_pdf/pseuds/evynyx_pdf, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reynier/pseuds/Reynier
Summary: Lancelot and Gawain go on a valiant mission to retrieve Meleagant's latest kidnapping victim.(It's Knight of the Cart but a Western.)
Relationships: Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 20





	Ashes Into Concrete

**Author's Note:**

  * For [secace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secace/gifts).



> **Eddie:** happy birthday lou!!! im so glad we became friends, i wish you a great year filled with joy, murderous glee, eegees and lots of gay things in both senses of the word <3 how does it feel to be the coolest old man in the world
> 
> **Evelyn:** Hi lou i love you so much <3 I hope you enjoy this fic as a gift and offering king, you deserve it. I’m so appreciative of you and your work and your friendship!!! Everything in this was specifically tailored to your taste, so I hope we got it right. Much love bro. Stay safe, stay sexy. Gawain.
> 
> **Rey:** well this isn't GOOD per se but we sure hope it's all your favourite tropes. have a wonderful birthday bro you really really deserve it. i cherish you and your friendship.

Lots of people died in Tucson, Arizona. It was the end of the railroad; the end of the road in many visceral and colorful ways. And, in the way of pit stops, there was a graveyard. 

“He’s not dead yet,” said Gawain Orkney, the undertaker, casting a skeptical eye over the body that had been deposited on his desk. 

Lancelot du Lac, resident cowboy and ostensible cowman, shifted nervously. He had hoped that this particular detail would escape the notice of certain people whose opinions mattered to him very greatly. “Um. Sorry.”

“I mean…” Gawain flicked the body on one of its large protruding ears. “I can’t just bury him like this. That would be awful. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” said Lancelot, “yeah. Of course. Yeehaw.”

A quick glance around the lobby revealed that, for once, no one else was hanging around for the pleasures of the undertaker’s company. “Well…” Gawain twisted his mouth thoughtfully and propped his elbows on the nearly-dead body. “I’d have to charge extra. For preparation? I think it’s technically a facet of preparing the body.”

“Oh,” said Lancelot, relieved, “well, I can pay. With… beans? I have beans, and a cricket that’s been in my pocket for a while, and three nickels but one of them is cursed.” 

“What’s it cursed with?”

“Ducks.”

Gawain gave this a moment’s thought. “Yeah, this one’s on the house. Come back at two to collect your bonus item, alright?”

“Of course.” Lancelot nodded emphatically, turned halfway around, and then skidded back in a circle. “Uh, what bonus item?”

“One undertaker.”

“Ha,” said Lancelot, gave him a friendly smile which he hoped didn’t intimate too much, and then ran for safety. His frequent conversations with Gawain tended to go like this, because he was never entirely certain what was a joke and what wasn’t, and this stressed him out. Unfortunately stress also provoked in him several other emotions, many of which were not listed in decent dictionaries, which provoked shame, which squared the matter. It was easier to stew in inertia. 

Lancelot, once safe from the provocations of being within the radius of Gawain, found himself wandering down the main street, disgruntled by the extreme heat of the day, when he found a single toad in front of him. “Ah,” he said, kneeling down to address this new friend. “Hello, toad.” 

“Raaoooooohch,” said the toad. 

Lancelot nodded. “Do you want a cricket? Do you even eat crickets?” The toad blinked. “Is that a no? I get it. No one seems to want my cricket.” Lancelot sighed and sat next to it. “You’re probably wanting a monsoon this time of year, huh? Me too. I think we could all use a monsoon. Something to really make a splash. Maybe you just want some rain because you’re a toad. Ah, to be a toad. Strong arms. You can jump far without a horse attached. No worries in the world. Unless?” He looked into the rectangular pupils. “Being dry?”

“Oh, it’s about to get a lot dryer.” 

Lancelot started at the voice behind him and the toad, intimidated by the new arrival, leaped off to hide under the shade of a cactus. “Hello, Guinevere.”

The magistrate’s wife, the long hem of her skirt somehow undusted and spotless, nudged him gently on the shoulder. “There’s a dry spell coming, according to that weird science man who lives on the edge of town. Didn’t you hear? All your toad friends will shrivel up.”

To Lancelot, this seemed cataclysmic news. “Why would you _say_ that?” 

“Noooo…” crooned Guinevere, her forehead wrinkling. “I’m sure they’ll be fine. I’m just being mean. Anyway, where have you been all day? I tried to find you at the saloon. Rumors abound.”

“What are they abounding?”

“Depends,” she said, holding out a hand to help him up from the ground. “What do you have for me in return?”

He patted his pockets. “A nickel cursed with ducks?”

“I’ll take it.” She held out her hand for this offering and, once he supplied it, shoved it down the front of her bodice. “Anyway, Mordred Orkney said--”

Lancelot coughed. “Mordred Orkney? I thought he hadn’t come out of the basement in years. And no one’s allowed in the basement.”

“I’m allowed to do anything,” said Guinevere. “At least anything that relates to Gawain’s snake oil funeral business. You know, a lot of people die in Tucson.”

“Mhm,” said Lancelot. “Yeah.”

She set off strolling down the street, leaving Lancelot to stride after her. “Maybe more people than would die if people didn’t like visiting the town’s only undertaker so much.”

“Hhhh,” said Lancelot, glad the brim of his hat hid his face. 

“What does ‘hhhh’ mean?”

He tried and failed to think of a definition. “It means-- hhhh.”

Not pausing in her elegant promenade down the main street, Guinevere raised an eyebrow at him. “I keep telling you to shoot your shot. You should listen to me. I’m very smart.”

“You’re scary and so is he.”

“Thank you, I try very hard. But come on, Mister Cowboy, you’ve got a horse and the best hand since the Waco Kid, and Gawain’s a dumb undertaker whose only strengths are popularity and being annoying. Besides, you two are thick as thieves already. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He could-- he could say no. And then I would have to find a hole to go live in.”

“Say no? To you?” Across the street, Lionel the barber waved at her, and Guinevere ignored him. “Lancelot, you’re a wonderful person aside from your general personality, and unfortunately Gawain is inflicted with the same flaws, so he has no ground to complain.”

Breezing over insults to himself, Lancelot focused on insults to Gawain, which seemed a far more grievous offense. “What flaws does Gawain have?” “Oh, well…” Guinevere waved a hand. “I mean, he’s my best friend in the whole world, so take this as a reflection on myself as well, but, you know, being irritating and immoral. I mean, you must have noticed.”

“That’s mean,” said Lancelot weakly. 

“Yes, I know, I’m irritating and immoral too.” They had reached the saloon, known on paperwork as The Saloon, where the town’s denizens tended to congregate. “Before I forget-- rumours. The rumours that are abounding. Apparently Eric McLack is out for revenge. I would warn Gawain about it, but he doesn’t believe in consequences and I do try to coddle him in these matters.”

Pausing in front of the saloon doors, Lancelot scanned his brain for who Eric McLack was. “Um. Alright. Thank you, I’ll look out for Eric McLack.”

“You don’t know who Eric McLack is, do you?”

“Um. No.”

“An enviable state of existence. Asshole with a ten-gallon hat and spurs like he wants to kill something. Enide’s husband.”

“Oh! Enide.” Lancelot liked Enide. She smiled at him whenever he ran into her and had once knit him a shawl. “What’s he out for revenge over?”

Guinevere gave a helpless shrug. “Well, you know how Gawain has a habit of pissing off the husbands of beautiful women?”

“Oh no.”

“Actually, he’s entirely innocent in this case-- Enide’s just a friend as far as I’m aware. But there’s no use in telling McLack that.”

“Right,” said Lancelot, unsure what to do with this information, “alright, I’ll keep an eye out. Thanks.”

Guinevere gave him one of her crystal-sharp smiles. “You’re a gem. Look at it like this-- maybe this will give you a shot to play the knight in shining armour. How does that sound?”

“Good?” said Lancelot, who didn’t know what a knight was. 

“Buck up, buckaroo.” Guinevere reached out a finger and flicked him under the chin. “There’s a dry spell coming.”

“Horse gone,” said Gawain, striding towards Lancelot, his pristine duster wavering in the reflectory afternoon heat.

Lancelot straightened from his inspection of a nearby cactus and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Horse… gone?” 

“Horse gone. Not here. Away. Missing. Someone has stolen my fucking horse, Lancelot.” 

“Ah,” said Lancelot, nodding. “Maybe he just wandered off? Gringolet does that.” 

“Obviously I know Gringolet does that, thank you,” Gawain said sharply. “But this isn’t like that time he thought it would be fun to stroll into the parlor during a funeral. Or the time he wanted to go to Aggs’ grand opening of 1800s Eegees for a summer treat. Or the time he followed you all the way to Cali but decided he was better than that.” A look of feverish fervour entered Gawain’s eyes. “He left his gun at home. He wouldn’t do that.”

This presented a minefield of horse crimes which Lancelot was not prepared to enter. He had been attempting to find another toad friend to replace the one Guinevere had menaced away, and despite the morning’s tumultuous events he had been prepared to pass a slow afternoon doing Lancelot things, which tended to happen slightly outside the realm of other people things. Now there was a person, and moreover a Person, who was bringing Problem Things to his Place of Faith (Toad Quests). He was not entirely sure how to handle this, but-- well, it was _Gawain._ Something had to be done. “Do you need my help?”

Gawain made a kind of nonchalant squirming gesture that indicated if he had been inside, he would have leaned casually on the wall. They were in the street outside and it was over one hundred degrees, but in Lancelot’s eyes he managed to pull it off regardless. There was very little that Gawain could not pull off in Lancelot’s eyes, including murder. “I don’t _need_ your help…” he said, then trailed off and stared vaguely at the middle distance for several seconds longer than was entirely normal. With anyone else he would have gotten odd glances, but this was Lancelot, who just waited patiently for the mental process that was occurring to occur. Then Gawain’s eyes clicked back, wide and earnest under the brim of his black Stetson and the curly ends of his bangs. “Actually, scratch that, I absolutely need your help. Please, Lancelot. You’re my only ho.”

This was not true in any regard, which Lancelot was very much aware of, but he wasn’t a former-horse-rustler-turned-general-cow-crimes-man for nothing. He knew how to rustle a horse; he had rustled many horses in his time, and so presumably he could figure out how to unrustle one. “I’ll help! I can-- I can definitely help.” Some mental processes finished grinding the few gears of his brain to which they had been allotted (the rest of his brain having been dedicated to staring at Gawain, who looked very good in the black duster he always wore despite the heat). “Hold on a moment. I talked with Guinevere this morning--”

“I’m sorry,” said Gawain automatically, which was very bold considering he had given Guinevere the keys to both his family business and his house. 

“Uhuh,” said Lancelot, who had had a Thought and was very intent on sharing it, “and she said that someone named Aaron Lag was out for revenge.”

Gawain frowned. “Who?”

Perhaps that was not quite right. “Aaron… Erbert… Eric?”

“Eric McLack?”

“Yes!” He was excited to have made some progress. “Eric McLack! Perhaps he rustled Gringolet?”

This idea seemed to resonate. “Yes, yes,” said Gawain, rubbing his gloved hands together. “Yes. Well, we must wreak our revenge on Eric McLack. Perhaps a blood eagle…”

“A what?” said Lancelot curiously. 

“No, no, I’m getting ahead of myself. Practicalities first.”

Lancelot was working on a theme. “We could eat his still-beating heart.” 

“Hm. Possible. Perhaps not enjoyable. But the first order of business is to retrieve Gringolet. I hesitate to say ‘save,’ because he would take offense.”

“I don’t want to offend Gringolet.” Lancelot shook his head for emphasis. “Anyway, do you know where Gringolet might have been, uh, horsenapped to?”

“Uh, no.”

“Oh.” Somewhere above them, a raven crowed. “We should find out. That would be a good first step.”

“You’re brilliant!” proclaimed Gawain, throwing his arms wide and then taking a moment to wink at the man on the other side of the street who turned to stare at him. 

“You think so?”

“I know so.” An idea drifted down like a dandelion seed and settled in his eyes. “To the saloon, Lancelot!”

As they approached the saloon, Gawain practically buzzing with the anticipation of finding and kicking Eric McLack’s teeth in, Lancelot noticed a sign advertising “BOGO!” with a crudely drawn whiskey glass.

“Oh, there’s bogo,” he said, nodding at the sign. 

“Huh?” Gawain turned to look at Lancelot, passing fantasies interrupted and tassels swinging. “There’s bogo?”

“Bogo,” repeated Lancelot as explanation, and pointed for Gawain to follow. 

“Ah.” Gawain nodded and twitched a little before continuing to storm ahead. He pushed open the swinging doors, kicking up dust and two poor lizards that had been resting below the hinges. “Where the fuck— oh, hey Priamus, how’s the shop? Nice to see you— where the fuck is Eric McLack?” Chatter slowed to a murmuring quiet, eyes peeked out from under hat brims, mouths disentangled themselves, glasses slammed on the bar. Lancelot gave a small wave from behind Gawain. 

“Oh Christ, Gawain, what is it this time?” Kay slung a towel over his shoulder and pinched his forehead. 

Gawain strode determinedly into the saloon, still high on a ‘horse gone’ fever. He leaned on the bar in front of Kay. “Fucker stole my horse. Can’t have shit in Tucson.” 

“Hm,” said Kay. “Are you sure he isn’t just—”

“No, he’s not just wandering off.”

Kay sighed. “Alright. You can post his picture up on the Rustled board.” He pointed to the far back wall. Sure enough, layers of posters featuring various horses were pinned haphazardly over the wood. 

“I am _not_ putting _Gringolet_ on the Rustled board,” growled Gawain. He scoffed, grabbed the glass of the nearest customer, and took a swig. “Gringolet on the Rustled board. You must be out of your mind. Don’t you know he’s shy? He doesn’t like having his picture taken, Kay.” Kay wouldn’t exactly describe the 20-hand-tall horse as ‘shy’, nor ‘baby’ as Gawain had been known to call him, seeing as Gringolet was a trained assassin and licensed dentist. However, Kay knew better than to debate Gawain on the matter of his horse in times of strife.

“Besides,” Gawain turned his back to the bar and looked out over the saloon’s patrons. “I’m going straight to the source. So I ask again, where the fuck is Eric McLack?” 

This was when a chipper, utterly average voice piped up from his right. “Oh, Eric McLack? He’s out at Gorre.” 

Unfortunately for Gawain’s quest, Gerry’s quite helpful remark went unnoticed. Instead, Gawain moved to interrogate the next face he laid eyes on. “You,” he slammed his hands on the table and shaking the glasses rested there. “You’re a slimy bastard. Do you know where this other slimy bastard is?” 

Bleobris smiled, rotten and pathetic. He had the air of a man whose vibes were so deeply rancid that dogs typically bit him on sight. “What’s in it for me if I do?”

“Keeping your fucking limbs intact, how about that? Are you going to be useful to me or not?” 

This did things to Lancelot’s brain that he couldn’t quite handle thinking further on at the moment.

Bleobris frowned and took a sip of his drink — vodka cut with milk over ice, a truly poetic and revolting illustration of the man consuming it. “I suppose not.”

“Again, McLack’s just out at Meleagant’s ranch! Gorre! You’ll get there if you go far enough west outside city limits!” Gerry offered cheerfully. 

Priamus patted his companion’s arm and turned to Gawain. “Hey, Gawain, I think I know where Eric is.” 

Gawain whipped his head around at this. “Oh, yes Priamus? Do you? That would be great, where?” 

“I think he’s out at Meleagant’s ranch, Gorre. Middle of the desert if you go west.”

“Thank you so much, Priamus, really, this is so helpful of you.” 

“No problem.” Priamus sat back and gave a thumbs-up. “Stop by the Sun and Glass Hut on your way if you have the time.”

If Gerry was dismayed at only being heard through the mouth of the Priamus, he certainly didn’t show it. He just continued on sipping his beer with the expression of a man whose most interesting conversational topics were local dispensary fund council elections.

“Alright,” Gawain clapped his hands. “Great! Lancelot, are you coming with?” 

Lancelot was in the middle of inquiring for his best estimation of a ‘Bogo’ at the bar, but stumbled over himself at Gawain’s call. “Oh,” he said. “Me? I’m— me coming with?” 

“Of course,” said Gawain. “Who else would I go find my lost horse with?” 

“Mm!” Lancelot said. “Yeehaw, I suppose.” 

“Yeehaw.”

Gringolet was out of commission. This raised some problems, notably that Gawain did not have an extra horse lying around, although he definitely could have found one somewhere. However, being the kind and generous soul he was, Lancelot offered a solution: his own saddle was definitely big enough for two, definitely, really, it was no problem. 

“Are you sure?” said Gawain, staring at Lancelot’s horse with an expression of concern. “I don’t want to be a bother. I could rustle someone else’s horse and take that.”

“Well,” said Lancelot logically, “think how horribly offended Gringolet would be if you showed up with a new, freshly-rustled horse.”

“That’s a good point,” said Gawain, “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re very right.”

Which was how Lancelot found himself in the enviable state of cantering along the western road, path set for Gorre, with the Tucson municipal undertaker clinging to his waist slightly tighter than might be deemed entirely necessary. It was a hot day, because all days were hot in Tucson, Arizona, except the days which were monsoons or inexplicably sub-zero. Lancelot liked those days. He especially liked the monsoons, which made him feel less than alive, a shadow of a man who flitted invisibly from street to street without ever being seen by the callow town-people. There was something magical about a monsoon. The way that everyone stayed indoors and left the world to him. The way the streets turned to rivers because no one had bothered to build gutters. Monsoons were _good._

But he was finding it hard to object to today’s weather, not when the fortuitous tides of the sun had gifted him with Gawain’s tight grip and the ghost of his breath on Lancelot’s neck. This was perfectly fine weather for a reverse horse heist. It was hard to think too much about how hot it was when you were busy thinking very hard about your best friend in some very specific ways. Certain things were hot, yes, but at the present time the weather would not have ranked at the top of Lancelot’s mental list of such things. 

They passed an amiable hour at a light canter which segued into a trot when Gawain expressed concern over his poor horse. At first they rode in silence, broken only by the twitter of desert birds and the occasional _yip_ of a coyote, but as the miles stretched out and the saguaros ceased to fascinate quite as much as they had when all Lancelot could think about was the feel of Gawain’s hand on his waist, they fell into a amiable chit-chat. 

“You’d be surprised at the odd things I find out from the dead people business,” Gawain was saying, around the time the town faded out of view behind them. “Like, did you know Pellinore Aramathy had a tattoo of a giraffe on his ass?”

Lancelot choked and had to be prevented from falling off his horse by a helping hand. The fact that the hand did not thereafter remove itself, instead drifting to Lancelot’s own hand on the reins, was one that gave him all sorts of feelings which would have been best examined when not astride a horse. “Thats-- that’s very odd.” He mulled the name _Pellinore Aramathy_ over in his mind, trying to remember who he was. “How did he die, again?”

“Slit throat,” said Gawain, in the voice of a cat that had been set loose in a creamery. 

No matter the way he tripped through life, Lancelot was not stupid. Impressionable, yes; whimsical, certainly; with an eye to the roses of the world and no regard for thorns. But he was not stupid. “Do you perform additional help often in the funeral business?” he asked inquisitively, as though it was a normal topic of smalltalk. “The way you do for me?”

Gawain hummed against his neck. “Well, a man may love his job, and a man may pick up related hobbies on his own time, yes? And if those hobbies prove useful in the area of his career as it pertains to one particularly good friend (and also the magistrate’s wife, who may demand of me whatever services she wishes), then that’s simply fortuitous, yes? Anyway, Pellinore had it coming.” This last he delivered with a measure of cold satisfaction that ran icy against the heat of the day. 

“Well, that all seems--” But whatever it seemed to Lancelot was interrupted by a yelled _halloo!_ from the side of the road. Reigning in his horse, Lancelot turned to the source of the voice. It was, inexplicably, Priamus, waving from under a hand-painted sign decrying the Sun and Glass Hut. Why it was located in the middle of the desert was unclear. What it sold was also unclear. How Priamus had arrived there on foot faster than they had ridden was even more unclear. 

“Oh,” said Gawain, “the Sun and Glass Hut. We should stop and get Gringolet something as a Congratulations On Being Rescued present.”

“What do they sell?”

This stumped him. “Hey, Priamus!” he shouted with a friendly smile. “What do you actually sell?”

“Sun,” said Priamus, pointing up to display the merchandise, “and glasses.” There was a clinking sound and he produced two shot glasses embossed with some kind of logo. 

“Why?”

“Because I want Lucius to go bankrupt,” Priamus said cheerfully. “Don’t buy anything from me. I'm going to drive him out of business and then file a lawsuit against him for financial malpractice. My attorney has it all planned out."

Priamus' attorney was a black-clad, deeply intimidating young man by the name of Galahad. Lancelot knew this despite his disconnect from many of the townspeople because it had been he who had found Galahad wandering in the saguaros with only a Douay-Rheims bible and an abacus for protection, and he who had herded him gently in the direction of Tucson. If Lancelot had been a little more of a romantic and Galahad had been a little less viscerally terrifying, he might have regarded the young man as his son, in a metaphorical sense. But he didn't, because once you saw someone perform an exorcism on a rabid javelina you didn't think of them in a paternalistic way ever again. 

“That sounds great,” Gawain said from behind Lancelot’s shoulder. “But I want to get my horse a present to give him as a congratulations for being unrustled. Is there anything you can actually sell me?”

Propping his elbows on the stand, Priamus mulled it over. “I have some bones,” he offered eventually. “I don’t know what they are. I’m not a bone expert. Unless you mean in the area of--”

“I don’t,” said Gawain happily, “but thank you. You can tell me about that later. Anyway, I’ll take the weird bones. He’ll like those. Should be nice and crunchy.”

After a moment of rustling under the counter, Priamus emerged with a burlap sack and bounced over to them. “Currency?” 

“I have a cricket,” Lancelot offered stiffly. He didn’t like Priamus much. He held it against him that he seemed to be constantly happy when he, Lancelot, had to try very hard to be happy and even then it was about as stable a state as a card house in a hurricane. “And two nickels. Not cursed with anything. I gave that one away.”

Priamus gave him a weird look. “I think I’ll forego the cricket and the nickels, but thank you. Gawain, they’re your bones now.” He shook the burlap sack, which rattled. “No such thing as free bones between friends.”

“Just free bone, singular,” said Gawain absentmindedly, forgetting his earlier valiant attempt to prevent all suggestive bone-related jokes. “Free burial pass?”

“We don’t pay for burials anyway,” pointed out Priamus. “The people who pay taxes do that.”

“Ah, yes. What I mean is: on the house. Just to fill my serious passion for burying dead bodies. No write-up. No nasty paper trail.”

“Yeehaw,” said Priamus, and passed him the bone bag. “Have a great day, Gawain.”

“Bye, Priamus. Thanks for the bones.”

“Goodbye, Priamus,” Lancelot echoed, only he said it quietly so that only Gawain heard it. Then he spurred his horse into a canter in order to escape the Sun and Glass Hut as quickly as possible. 

“You don’t like him,” Gawain remarked without malice once Priamus had disappeared around a bend in the road. “You like most people.”

Suddenly Lancelot very much felt the sun. It scorched his cheeks and ears. “He-- he makes me feel-- I don’t know.”

The pause was sufficiently long that Lancelot wanted to turn around and make sure Gawain hadn’t spontaneously died or something of that ilk. Unfortunately, sitting on a horse did not enable that, so he had to wait. Eventually Gawain spoke. “Are you _jealous_ of him?”

“Well, he’s-- he’s so-- everything I’m not.”

“And you’re everything he’s not,” said Gawain, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Lancelot, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be jealous of anyone. Not-- not _you._ ”

Lancelot squirmed uncomfortably, which brought some interesting contact with the man pressed up behind him on the saddle. “What do you mean?”

“What do I-- Lancelot, for God’s sake! Are you doing this for a wager? Do you know what you are?”

“What?” said Lancelot, now thoroughly confused. “A cowboy?”

There was some silence from behind him and then Gawain spoke again, his voice sounding strangely small. “You’re my best friend. I mean, there’s Guinevere, but she’s like a sister more than anything. You’re my best non-family friend. I don’t… I don’t actually have that many, you know. And beyond that, you’re really something special. Don’t you know that?”

“What?” said Lancelot again, but now he was near tears. “You think _I’m_ special? You think I’m your best friend? I thought-- I thought you were mine but I wasn’t yours.” This last was confessed in an embarrassed rush. 

“Are you crying? Oh, no.” Gawain sounded miserable. “Don’t cry. Don’t-- there, there.” He patted Lancelot awkwardly on the shoulder. “You’re going to fall off the horse.”

“Slot,” Lancelot managed, in between baby sobs. 

“It is a lot, I guess,” said Gawain retrospectively. “I mean, I would kiss you if you asked--”

“Slot!” said Lancelot again, who wasn’t listening. 

“I know, I heard you the first time. I agree. It is a lot.”

Lancelot waved his arms, which was a bad move because he was holding the reins. “No, I mean _slot canyon_!”

“Fuck!” screeched Gawain, and managed to yank the reins to the left before the horse reared at the brink of the slot canyon gaping in front of them. “What the fuck! I fucking hate this desert!”

Lancelot sniffed and threw a hand vaguely in the canyon’s direction. “Oh god, Gawain, there’s choices.” 

Gawain followed Lancelot’s gaze to the far side of the canyon. A signpost held two planks, pointed opposite directions. To their left, the plank read ‘Water Bridge - 55 ft’, and their right, ‘Normal Bridge - 121 ft’, with a small painting of a cactus over the word ‘Normal’. 

“It’s alright, let’s just — well the water bridge seems closer, we can do that, okay?” 

Lancelot nodded. Gawain, still holding the reins from behind Lancelot, tried his best to steer the horse in the direction of the water bridge. 

“I can’t — Lancelot can you take these,” he held up the reins. “I can’t steer the horse from back here. And Gringolet would be jealous.” Lancelot turned his head, almost crashing into Gawain’s. 

“What? Oh, yeah, I’m sorry,” Lancelot said, taking the reins in his hands from Gawain, the dance of horse exchange once again tangling their hands before Gawain’s had settled around Lancelot. He led them into a half-trot until, very soon after they’d started, they arrived at the water bridge. 

The water bridge, to their surprise, ended up being a single puddle — if a larger-than-average puddle — where the canyon petered off. They stared at it in silence for a moment. Somewhere, in the distance, a roadrunner chattered. Gawain looked at Lancelot, and then back at the “bridge”, and frowned. 

“No.” He shook his head. “Not today.” 

“No water bridge?” Lancelot asked. It seemed a fine passage to him. Probably refreshing for the horse, too.

“Absolutely not, I’m sorry, Lancelot, but no,” Gawain said. “I hate water.”

“Well, the sign did say _water_ bridge.”

“I didn’t think it meant it was an actual body of water!” Gawain exclaimed. Lancelot thought ‘body of water’ was perhaps a strong word for whatever they found in front of them. It looked more like a body of water’s midnight snack to him. But perhaps he was a poor judge of such things — Lancelot du Lac had grown up in the Great Lakes. Not near the Great Lakes, as he had to clarify so often, but in them. His mother owned an 1800s houseboat in the middle of Lake Superior that he still visited whenever he could get away from general cow crimes. All you had to do really was get to Wisconsin and it was smooth swimming from there. He forgot sometimes that not everyone spent their formative years on the water. 

“Well,” Lancelot began, trying to rack his brain for a solution. “What if you closed your eyes? And I could just not tell you when we cross?” 

Gawain shook his head again. “I’d still know. And the water would splash up onto my ankles, Lancelot, can you imagine?”

Lancelot considered this. “If it means that much to you, I guess we could just go to the other bridge. They promised it would be normal.” 

“As long as it doesn’t have water involved.” 

The Normal Bridge did not have water involved. What it did have was an orchard’s worth of jumping chollas. They crept along the side railings and floor panels, growing out from the sides of the canyon. The cacti taunted them, some leering over the bridge, like a tunnel if tunnels were made from fucked up cacti and also wanted you dead. To make things more irritating it was the widest area of the canyon to their sight; the bridge stretched almost 20 feet across. 

“Shoot,” said Lancelot. “How is the southwest this much of a nightmare?” 

“Hey, at least we have fun nightmares,” Gawain shot back. “The midwest is all lakes and tornadoes and shit. You think you’d see a jumping cactus in the middle of Michigan? No, and that’s our charm. That being said...” He gave the Normal Bridge a harrowing look. “Not sure how we’re gonna pull out of this one.”

But Lancelot was a man of many skills, and one of them was adaptation to extreme ecosystems. “Hold on. I know how to pull out cholla spines with a fork.”

“Do you have a fork?”

“Of course.” He produced his fork. It was slightly bent, but functional. 

“Wait,” Gawain said, laughing. “Where was the fork in your list of currency? Have you always had that?”

“You think I’d just offer up my fork like that? And let everyone know?” Lancelot tilted his head, a smile spreading across his face. “Gawain, a fork shared between friends is one thing, but the exchange from one man to another? For goods and services?”

“No, you’re right, of course. I’m glad you have the fork. Are you sure you can take out the spines with it?”

“I think I know what I’m doing,” Lancelot said. It wasn’t said with the level of confidence usually amounted to such statements. There was no assumed mastery in Lancelot’s spine removal. But he did _think_ he could do it, and that was about all one could ask for. 

Lancelot hopped off his horse and then held out a hand to help Gawain dismount as well. “Bye,” he told the horse, who stared at him. They hadn’t built up much of a bond. “Go away.” 

The horse didn’t. 

“Git,” said Gawain, “or I’ll tell Gringolet to hunt you down.”

The horse bolted back in the direction of Tucson. 

Of the journey across the Cholla Bridge, nothing may be said save that it was bearable for Gawain, who was dressed head-to-toe in sturdy leather (he felt that the sexiest outfit in any given situation was the one that common sense said you should not be wearing), but for Lancelot it was spiky. Being Lancelot, he suffered the spikes with a minimum of complaints, but when he reached the other side and found himself faced with the highly cholla’d picture of his hands, even his constitution was tested. 

Gawain gazed at him in concern. “Where’s the fork?” 

“My pack.” Lancelot waved a hand towards the bag slung over his shoulder, of which he had divested his horse before setting it loose. Gawain came up behind him to fish it out, picking off the stray chollas that had hitched rides on his clothes as he went. They allowed themselves to be evicted from leather far easier than from Lancelot Skin. 

“So,” he asked, stepping forward to face Lancelot. “How should I do this?” 

They were suddenly inches away from each other. They’d been practically on top of each other on the horse, but this was different. Something about being here with Gawain, being confronted with that mouth and those eyes right in front of him, and — oh — having his hand ever so slightly lifted by Gawain’s. He used just two light, leatherbound fingers to bring it closer, inspecting. 

Lancelot swallowed. “Well,” he said, just on the edge of his breath. “You — I think you hook the fork prongs on the, uh, the spines.” Gawain did so, carefully getting ahold of the spines lodged in Lancelot’s palm. He looked up at him for confirmation. 

“Like that?” 

Lancelot murmured something between an ‘mhm’ and ‘yeah’, but wasn’t quite sure himself what it filtered out to. He was too busy noticing _things_. Things like, gosh, had Gawain always had a mole on his neck there? And was the tingling in his hands from the cactus or the airy pressure from Gawain’s gloves? And wow, how could someone so boldly outlined and sharply announced could have such an elegant, gentle touch when he wanted? 

“Oh,” he said, realizing Gawain was awaiting instruction. “Just, uh, pull it out? Maybe?” 

Gawain laughed, and Lancelot swore he almost passed out. He had enough to focus on swooning over. 

“I thought you knew what you were doing,” Gawain said with a smile. 

“Ah, well. I, um, thought so too. But I think — yeah that, well, sounds right.” 

Gawain shrugged. “Alright, here goes I guess. Ready?” 

Lancelot could only nod. Gawain gave the fork a pull, and Lancelot winced, though it didn’t hurt quite as much as he had expected. Maybe he was too distracted. 

“Sorry!” Gawain looked up at Lancelot apologetically, pulling back the fork that now held a Lancelot-free cholla spine. “I didn’t mean to — my bad!” 

“No, it’s fine!” Lancelot shook his head so fast his hat dislodged itself. “It’s fine! I’m fine! It’s just — hhh, well, you know! Cactus!” 

Gawain nodded, though he still looked concerned. He brushed his thumb over the palm he’d just removed the cholla from, more a gesture of assurance than anything. They continued like that for the better part of the next half hour. It was all lingering fingers making their way over each other, gloved hands on skin and hat brims colliding whenever they leaned in too close. It was gently held eyes and awkward laughter. Breath and dust and wind. Somehow they found themselves sitting on the ground, cross-legged, Gawain leaning over Lancelot to pick out the last spine on his forearm. 

“There,” he said, discarding the cholla from the fork. “That’s the last one. I think we’re done!” He drew a hand down Lancelot’s arm until he reached his hand, and pulled them both to standing by his fingertips. 

“We should be going,” said Lancelot, not going anywhere. He wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. Time was flowing like honey; slow and soft and bitingly sweet. He wanted to drink it in, be immobilized in it like a fly in amber and never let it go. Days spent with Gawain were normally their own brand of special-- he didn’t have many close friends, and certainly none as close as the undertaker, which was a bit sad in some respects-- but the way Gawain was looking at him now was different. It was as though Gawain had taken their earlier conversation and decided Lancelot needed to be looked at as though he was special. 

Lancelot was suddenly feeling very special indeed, and he wasn’t moving, and Gawain wasn’t moving, and they were _very close together._

“Thank you for coming with me,” breathed Gawain, his eyes wider than Lancelot had ever seen them. “It was really-- really nice of you. You’re a good friend.”

“Any time,” said Lancelot, and meant it. He didn’t know what was happening but, for once, Gawain didn’t seem to either. The inertia that had held him at the top of a cliff for so long was gearing towards the kinetic. “I-- I think--”

“I think too.” Gawain seemed somewhat transfixed. The heat of the day, perhaps, or, if Lancelot let himself slide into fantasy, something else. “Like right now I think that--”

“Lancelot!” yelled someone, very loudly and very nearby. “Hey, Lancelot!”

Lancelot swiveled with a start, jolted out of the moment. Had there been a moment? He shook his head, embarrassed, and tried to focus on whoever was calling his name instead of the static in his spine or the heat rising to his cheeks. 

“Oh! Um, hello!” He started to wave but pulled his hand down at the last second, before tossing it up again. “Lancelot here.”

“I know,” said the man. “That’s why I called you.” He was walking closer, but Lancelot couldn’t place him. Maybe it was the desert dust, or the fact that he was feeling very disoriented and not quite sure of his surroundings. Lancelot squinted, and with sudden recognition gave a nervous laugh. 

“Palamedes! What are you doing here?” 

“Ah, you know,” Palamedes had reached them now with a warm smile. He had a coil of rope slung over one shoulder and a pack on the other. He tipped his hat at Lancelot. “Same gig as always. Mythical camels. I just can’t seem to find them…” He trailed off and looked over his shoulder as though one would appear right behind him. 

“Mythical camels?” Gawain asked. He made to cross his arms and lean against a wall, but found himself in the middle of the desert, so he settled with one leg crossed over the other, hands in his pockets. 

“Oh, hi!” Palamedes said, seeming to just notice his presence. “Uh, who are you?” 

Gawain raised an eyebrow. “Gawain Orkney? I’m sure we’ve met, I’ve seen pretty much every face in town.” Palamedes shook his head, but stretched out a hand.

“Don’t think so, but it’s a pleasure! Any friend of Lancelot’s is a friend of mine.” Gawain took his outstretched hand but still studied Palamedes, trying to place him. He wouldn’t be able to, but Gawain hadn’t figured that out yet. Unlike virtually every citizen of Tucson, Arizona, Palamedes had never needed to come to the undertaker’s. He had no reason to, no bodies to dispose of and no flights of fancy to entertain. Palamedes had lived, up until this moment, a Gawain-free life, and more or less an Orkney-free life in whole — not counting friendly encounters with Gareth here and there. 

“So, mythical camels?” Gawain repeated. 

Palamedes’ face lit up. “Mythical camels,” he sighed. “Mythical camels are a passion of mine. Searching for them, that is. I’ve been scouring these deserts for years.” 

“Years?” Gawain looked incredulously at him. “You haven’t found any yet?”

Palamedes looked down at his shoes and quietly shook his head.

“Gawain, he’s trying his best,” Lancelot said, patting Palamedes on the shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll find them, buddy.” 

“Yeah, all in good time. They’re just skittish.” He brightened and looked back up at Lancelot. “Well, what are y’all doing here? It’s getting a little late for a stroll, and you’re a bit too far from town anyway.”

It was getting late, Lancelot observed. The sun was lower than he’d thought it was the last time he looked, and the heat of the day was beginning to thin. He looked to Gawain. “Uh, well, we’re—”

“My horse has been rustled,” Gawain said. “Lancelot’s helping me find him. We’re heading to Meleagant’s ranch, because for some reason that’s where Eric McLack is camped out.” 

“Eric McLack?” Palamedes frowned. “Yeah I think I’ve seen him out here. Maybe a horse too many, I couldn’t really tell. Some folks, you know, they think they have the right to anyone’s horse. And I think that’s just a sign of a lonely, horseless man. Sorry about the rustling, though. Y’all are going the right way, head a little more north and you’ll be there in a mile or two.”

“Thanks, Palamedes,” said Lancelot. “Keep it up out there.”

Palamedes saluted the two of them as they parted ways. 

“Nice man,” mused Gawain, once they’d trundled a little ways further down the road, “nice man. Wish he’d drop by. I only ever meet assholes.” He glanced up at his companion, who was beginning to regret carrying his pack on foot. “Well, assholes and you,” he added charitably. 

Lancelot, who was drifting in his own nebulous world which consisted of being a bit confused, a bit stressed, and a bit turned on, was not registering any of this. It seemed that Things had come very close to happening, but had not happened, and the motivation for them not happening was irrelevant: the universe was probably telling him that Things were a bad idea. There was nothing to be done but forge ahead as he always had, so he broke into a stride again.

Laughing at his sudden burst of speed, Gawain scrambled to catch up, then frowned in concern. “Are you alright?”

“Huh?” said Lancelot, feeling a lot of things of which he didn’t know the names. “I’m fine. We should really unrustle your horse. He’s probably quite annoyed.”

“Gringolet doesn’t get annoyed. He’s too mad for that. It would be a deescalation.”

“He’s probably furious, then.”

“Probably…” Gawain gazed off with a dreamy expression. “Do you think he’s eaten anyone yet? What if we showed up and McLack was dead? That would be a waste of time.”

“That would be really sad,” said Lancelot truthfully. It would be sad. He had entertained vague, shame-filled fantasies of watching Gawain kill Eric McLack, and those would never reach reality if the man was already dead. He was very embarrassed about the effect these thoughts had on him, which didn’t improve the situation, but there was no getting rid of them. 

They rode on in relative silence for ten minutes, when Gawain nudged Lancelot and pointed to the horizon. Two horses were riding in their direction, one carrying two people and the other carrying a large object, its shape unrecognizable from so far away. Lancelot tensed and Gawain put a hand on his iron as the two riders quickly approached, leaving behind them a cloud of dust. 

“Greetings, y’all,” said the first rider as they approached. The other rider behind him, a young woman waved.

“Tristan, Iseult! What are you doing here? And why are you carrying that?” Lancelot gestured to the second horse, which they now recognized as unmistakably carrying a cactus, securely tied to the animal with thin rope. Gawain, on his part, contemplated the cactus quietly as he mourned with disappointment the loss of a possible enemy. After all, they had been looking for Eric McLack for a while now, and he was growing restless. 

“Oh, that? We’re following Palamedes, he keeps forgetting to hydrate and we were bringing him water, but Tristan lost the bottle,” said Iseult.

“So we’re bringing him a cactus,” added Tristan, as if it was a perfectly logical solution, “speaking of, have you seen him lately?”

“Yeah, he passed by no more than half an hour ago,” chimed in Gawain, not bothering to point out that the desert was full of cacti and that there was no need for that specific cactus.

“Well then, we really need to get going,” said Iseult.

“Yeah!” Echoed Tristan, “thanks for letting us crash at your place, by the way” he told Lancelot. The pair waved and rode off, followed by their cactus.

“You’ve got a house?” Said Gawain.

“Yeah.”

“In Tucson?”

“Yeah”

“But don’t you stay at the inn?”

“I really don’t see your point. The house is big and requires maintenance, why would I stay there?”

“That’s a very good point,” agreed Gawain.

It was approaching mid-afternoon when they finally rounded the bend to the ranch of Gorre, a large ten-acre estate that was nominally owned by Bagdemagus, but had been run by his son Meleagant as long as anyone could remember. Meleagant, as everyone knew, was a professional horse-rustler, which was probably why McLack had chosen his ranch to hide Gringolet. 

As they crested the low hill overlooking the ranch, all seemed still and quiet. A stealth approach was probably advisable. If he had been alone, Lancelot would have taken a stealth approach. It was absolutely the smartest thing to do. 

“Hey, fuckhead!” yelled Gawain, waving his hands over his head. “Eric McLack! You stole my fucking horse! What the fuck!”

There was silence. Nothing moved except a cactus some distance away, which fell over comedically.

“Even the cacti are shabby here,” muttered Gawain. He crossed his arms, tapped his foot, and gave Lancelot a frustrated glance. 

Some things were stupid to do, but so much fun you did them anyway, Lancelot reflected (he was entirely unaware that the foremost name in this category of things was, according to many townspeople, Gawain). A quiet smile crossed his lips and, with the fastest hands since the Waco Kid, he unholstered his gun and fired one shot in the air ahead of him. 

The sound reverberated around the small valley, echoing off of rocks and cacti and startling the sheep corralled by the south side. By his side, Gawain let out a peel of high-pitched laughter and gave him a look like the Devil at a bonfire. After a couple seconds, a figure emerged out of the large ranch house at the bottom of the drive and stood, arms crossed, to face them. 

“Who’s that?” asked Lancelot, who was very bad at recognizing people. “Is that Eric McLack?”

Gawain squinted. “I think that’s Meleagant.”

“I’m Meleagant!” yelled Meleagant, emphatically. “This is my ranch! What are you doing here?”

“Unrustling our horse!” Gawain yelled back. 

Although part of his brain was honoured at being grouped in with Gawain, fear of Gringolet won out in Lancelot’s brain. “ _Your_ horse.”

“Unrustling my horse!”

“Oh!” shouted Meleagant, and then paused for a second. “Well, you can’t unrustle him! He’s been good and properly rustled!”

This gave them pause. They glanced at each other, unsure how to proceed. Then Gawain called back, “Well, what do you want to do about it?”

There was some stomping on Meleagant’s end as though he was kicking up a dust cloud in an attempt to extricate himself from the situation. “I’m a professional horse rustler and I was hired to rustle your horse and if you want to unrustle him then you best be prepared to be rustled yourself! Now you’ve made an enemy of Meleagant, asshole! Get ready to meet these gu--”

There was a bang. It was, by the measure of bangs, very loud, and particularly loud to Meleagant, who was on the receiving end of it. Lancelot lowered his gun slowly, eyeing the figure on the ground screeching and clutching his hand. 

“You missed,” pointed out Gawain, because he strove to be as annoying as possible in any given situation. 

“I didn’t miss,” said Lancelot, the fastest hand since the Waco Kid, “I just figure everyone deserves two chances to win.”

Gawain eyed him, his lips slightly parted. “I’ve lost once,” he said, inexplicably. “Wish me better luck next time?”

“Better luck next time.” Lancelot raised his gun again in case Meleagant tried any funny business like revenge. _Everyone deserves two chances to win._ It was a pretty way of saying _it’s not fun if it’s over immediately_ , and he knew that and Gawain knew that and probably Meleagant knew that as well. Sometimes you felt bad about things and then did them anyway. If you were Lancelot, who felt bad about practically everything all the time, you lived your life in a vague haze of shame and uncertain emotions, and some moments cut through the fog like no others. Such as the glint of Gawain’s smile and Meleagant’s desperate, impossible second chance to win. Keeping his eyes on his quarry, he said to Gawain, “Go find Gringolet and Eric. I’ll deal with him.”

Gawain stared back for a moment before speaking. “Bring me back his head, will you?” 

Lancelot considered this, sliding a look to Meleagant on the ground, then back to Gawain. “Okay.” 

This stopped Gawain in his tracks for just a half-step. He looked at Lancelot and smiled, slow and intentional, before continuing on to the ranch. The retreating footsteps left a buzz in Lancelot’s ears, though maybe that was the lingering gunshot reverb. He twitched once, and turned his gaze back to Meleagant, and strode off down the roads towards him. The man didn’t quite look afraid enough, he thought. More anger than fear filled his eyes. Well, that could change. It had before. 

“Fuck you,” spat Meleagant. 

There was blood on his collar from the previous shot. In an instant Lancelot grabbed it and pulled him to his knees. Gawain had-- well, Gawain had asked for his head, hadn’t he? It probably hadn’t been metaphorical. He slid a long, thin knife from his boot, pressing it just above where he held the man by his shirt. Ah, and there it was — Meleagant’s pulse was pounding against the metal and his gaze wavered. 

“Wait,” he said, and perhaps consequences began to come into focus for him because he began to beg. “Please, the horse is inside, you’re free to have him. I don’t care, I’ll let him loose for you.” 

Lancelot shook his head. “The horse isn’t my issue anymore. Gawain has that covered. You’re my issue now.”

A glower edged the tears out of Meleagant’s eyes. “Come on, you bastard, let me go. I can pay you. I can pay well. Just don’t kill me right now.”

Lancelot let out one slow breath from his nose and stepped back just slightly. The moral thing to do would be to let Meleagant go or kill him quickly. However he was also fairly certain that the moral thing was not the thing that Gawain wanted, and it also wasn’t really the thing that Lancelot wanted. A picture formed through the clouds, clear and perfect. “Alright. It’s only fair. Here,” he said, planting his feet and giving a wave of his hand. “You already have a disadvantage with your hand, so I’ll level it out, okay?”

Meleagant gasped and nodded. So desperate for a man who had spoken so gallantly of himself just minutes earlier. 

Lancelot continued, studying Meleagant, “I’ll stay here.” He pointed to his feet. “And you can come at me however you want. Oh, and I’ll leave this out, too.” He grabbed his holster and tossed it to the side, skidding on the dust. “Fair?” 

It was obvious it took effort for Meleagant to swallow his fear and pull himself to his feet. He attempted to regain some of his previous menace by snarling out: “ _Fair_.”

Small and anticipatory, Lancelot smiled. “One condition. You can kill me if you’re able, but if you lose...” He paused, as if weighing his next sentence. In a sense he was weighing it, curious whether he would wind up saying it or not. But there was nothing innocent about Meleagant. “If you lose, I get your head.”

A cold paleness washed over Meleagant’s face, but he pretended not to notice. It took two tries for him to speak. “Won’t even —” A small shudder betrayed his bravado. “Won’t even be a contest.” 

“Yeah,” said Lancelot, “I know.” 

In a burst of speed, Meleagant lunged for his fallen gun, resting on the ground very deliberately several feet behind where Lancelot had planted himself. As he dove past, Lancelot snaked out a hand to grab him by the collar and fling him bodily backwards. Meleagant crashed to the ground, spitting curses. 

Lancelot only had a second of repose before Meleagant rushed him again. This time there was no feign for the gun; just a solid slam of his shoulder into Lancelot’s collarbone. Or at least where Lancelot’s collarbone would have been had he not carefully lifted one foot, pivoted like a ballet dancer, and placed it back down once Meleagant had cratered past him. This brought Meleagant into the reach of the gun, and he took the opportunity to grab it even as he lay fallen in the dust. Lancelot watched him dispassionately. Most of the time he had a lot of emotions. He was rapidly realising that this meant there were very few left over for the situations which normally would have merited them, such as watching Meleagant fumble with the rotating barrel of a pistol, pointed waveringly at Lancelot’s face. But he had spent his entire life feeling a lot of things at the same time, and he knew how to ignore it all when needed. It was only polite to let Meleagant have a hope. Just a little hope. Lancelot had a lot of little hopes, and not many big hopes, and most of them were dashed in the end regardless of size. 

So he let Meleagant flick the barrel until it clicked, the sound of a shot sliding into place, before he moved. When he did move, knife in hand and then not in his hand and then embedded in Meleagant’s shoulder, it was faster than the other man could hope to fire. Shrieking, Meleagant collapsed back, gun falling out of his slack hand. “Please,” he managed. “Please, I surrender, I--”

“Why do you want to live?” asked Lancelot. He was curious. 

Meleagant sought for words. “The magistrate’s wife is really smexy,” he forced out. “And I really want to--”

“Oh no,” said Lancelot, trying very hard not to listen, “no, that won’t do it, sorry. That wasn’t good enough. We had a deal.”

The quickest hand since the Waco Kid, they said. Well, it could be slow if it wanted to. 

While Lancelot was finishing business, Gawain was charging through the ranch stables, trying to find Gringolet. There were a lot of horses. They had probably all been rustled. One of them he recognized as Kay’s old nag, who had disappeared last Christmas. He gave it a friendly whistle as he passed, but since all the doors were padlocked he decided not to waste time on liberating it. 

The rows of stable doors stretched on and on, and none of them were labelled. He felt antsy. Eric McLack could show up at any minute, armed-- and Gawain had nothing but the annotated copy of the _Bacchae_ he carried with him everywhere (in the original Greek). 

It was then that a door crashed open at the far end of the stable from where he had entered. He spun around, his hand already reaching for the _Bacchae_ , half-expecting Erick McLack to be charging him with a knife. But although two people stood in the door, neither was McLack. One was a woman, slightly taller than him, her black hair bound up under a handkerchief and her pants well-worn leather. The other was a hunched old man with a walking stick. 

“Hello?” said Gawain. “I’m breaking into your stables! Can I help you?”

“Watch your manners, young man!” hollered the elder, waving a finger threateningly in the air. “You mustn’t be so presumptive! You can’t help us, we’re here to help you!” “What?” said Gawain, who was scared of helpful parental and grandparental figures. 

The woman crossed her arms. “You’re the undertaker, aren’t you? I’ve seen you around town.”

Gawain dusted off his duster, which didn’t need it. It had a miraculous habit of staying pristine regardless of what he did in it or who he did in it. “I am. Gawain Orkney of Orkney Funeral Services, at your funerary service. And whom do I have the delight of speaking to?”

“I’m Cerise and this is my father. We want to help you bully our brother.”

“Ah,” said Gawain. He opened his mouth and shut it again, then opted for dishonesty. “Well, that’s so kind of you, I just saw him, actually, he’s perfectly alive but very unhappy and thoroughly bullied. Do you know where my horse is?” “I’ll tell you where your horse is if you’ll help us kill my brother,” said the woman, flashing him a bright grin. 

“Ah,” said Gawain again. “Well, in fact, you’re in luck there because--”

From somewhere outside the stable there was a blood-curdling scream which extinguished itself nearly as quickly as it had begun. 

“--Lancelot is on the task,” Gawain finished with immense satisfaction. “That just leaves Eric McLack. Seen him anywhere?”

“Oh, dear,” said Cerise, very quietly. She had been trying to get his attention since the scream and had failed because he was very distracted thinking about Lancelot giving him Meleagant’s head on a plate. 

Someone growled behind him, “Turn around.”

It was indubitably Eric McLack. He held a pistol with both hands, pointed towards Gawain, and looked like a wet rat left to dry in the sun. 

Gawain hummed. _Finally_. “Eric,” he said, testing the air on his tongue. “You stole my fucking horse.” He could feel the _Bacchae_ in his pocket tingling. It wasn’t much compared to a gun, but that was in any other person’s hands. These hands were Gawain Orkney’s, and he intended to use them to his advantage. It was his specialty.

“You stole my fucking wife!” Eric said, peering over the barrel. 

“Your wife sucked me good and hard through my cowboy jorts,” said Gawain, who had only ever interacted with Enide in a crochet circle (and not the kind Guinevere held; Gawain wasn’t invited to those). 

Eric’s face turned to white hot rage and he shook the gun at Gawain. “She’s mine!”

“Not what she was saying the other night.”

Eric yelled in frustration and fired one shot into the roof of the stables. 

“Oh, come on,” Gawain said mockingly, giving the smoking hole a dull once-over. “That wasn’t even close. Are you as bad a lay as you are a marksman? No wonder Enide had to find someone else to fulfill her needs.”

“That was a warning shot!” Eric spat. He was practically foaming at the mouth. “Next time I won’t miss!” 

Gawain examined his nails. “Do you know why I’m such a good undertaker?”

Eric stammered, but Gawain didn’t let him finish. He was done with this. With one sickeningly fast motion he whipped _Bacchae_ out of his pocket and hurled it at Eric.

“I’m familiar with the business.” 

The book in all its Greek entirety hit Eric’s forehead with a sharp _thwack_ and fell. He stumbled for a moment, his gun clattering to the ground, before collapsing. A thin trickle of blood dripped down his face from where it had hit him. Gawain stepped forward to inspect his handiwork when he noticed movement down at the end of the stable. He looked up to find Lancelot staring at him, breathing heavy, covered in someone’s blood. With a brief moment of panic, Gawain worried it might have been his, but then remembered the scream and saw the knife in Lancelot’s hand. 

Lancelot looked at Gawain with a wild, almost ebullient expression and started to make his way to him. Gawain made to meet him there, but stopped short. 

“Wait,” he said, holding a hand up and crouching at Eric’s feet. “This bitch is still breathing.”

Lancelot looked at the knife in his hands and wordlessly held it out, raising his eyebrows in question. 

“No, I’ve got this one,” Cerise said, cocking her gun. “Step back, Gawain Orkney of Orkney Funeral Services.” 

“Oh, by all means,” said Gawain, stepping back as instructed. Even as he retreated, he only had eyes for Lancelot. 

Cerise sent one expert shot into Eric’s skull and he lay limp on the ground. “You want your horse?” She said, looking up at him as if she hadn’t just killed a man with a single bullet. 

“I want my horse,” Gawain breathed. 

Cerise shrugged and led him to the next row of stables. “Should be in here. This is where they keep all the rustled ones. I’m sorry for that, by the way,” she said, shaking her head. “I just work here, man.” 

“Oh, that’s alright,” Gawain said, scouring the stalls for Gringolet. “You’ve more than made up for it.” 

And there, at the end, suddenly he saw him. Gringolet Orkney himself. 20 hands tall and not an inch untouched by the fury only a horse can conjure. They met eyes, or at least, as well as a very tall horse and a somewhat less tall human can. Gawain ran to the stall and kicked down the door. Gringolet gave a loud, bellowing sound, not unlike the tolling of a church bell. His chains were soon removed by Gawain and they were reunited. Man and horse, together at last. Gawain could hardly believe it. He embraced Gringolet as best he could, wrapping his arms around his neck and stroking his mane. 

“It’s alright, boy, I’m back,” Gawain said into Gringolet’s shoulder. 

Gringolet huffed and opened his mouth. Gawain let himself be briefly covered by Gringolet's horse jaws and smiled. “It’s so good to see you. Yeah, we took care of them. Oh, no I knew you could handle yourself, I just thought you needed a hand. And besides, what would I have done just waiting around for you to come home?” He looked up at the sound of footsteps behind him. “Look who it is, Gringolet.”

Lancelot gave a small wave to the horse. “Uh, hey buddy.” 

Gringolet offered his mouth again to Lancelot, and he obliged. You don’t get to know Gawain as well as Lancelot did without knowing his horse’s customs and how to respect them. 

Speaking of Gawain, Lancelot realized he was under a stare as he emerged from horse mouth. “He’s dead?” said Gawain, an odd look on his face. Lancelot nodded. 

There was a _yippee_ from down the aisle. Bagdemagus was jumping for glee, or at least he was shuffling a bit and waving his arms in the air, which seemed to be much the same. “That good-for-nothing is gone for nothing!” he yodelled. “Me and my daughter are much indebted to you! He’s been holding us hostage and making us look at pictures of 1800s NASCAR drivers for well on six years!”

“Every morning he wanted me to make him an omelette with beef,” said Cerise moodily, unconcerned with the literal smoking gun in her hand. “I kept telling him you couldn’t make an omelette with beef. Eggs, dear brother, eggs, is what I said, but did he listen? No. Good riddance. And to that creep McLack as well.”

Bagdemagus cackled. “We’re very gracious towards you, good sirs! Will you be sticking around? We have beef omelettes! They taste like shit because you can’t make omelettes with beef.”

“Can’t make omelettes with beef,” Gawain repeated, shaking his head. One look at Lancelot’s face gave him enough answer that an extended social situation with strangers was not ideal. “We’re honoured, but we should be getting on our way. Back to Tucson and all that. I’m sure Gringolet is homesick.”

Gringolet whinnied to imply that home was an indifferent concept to him. 

“Well, you young sirs had best be having a nice day, then,” said Bagdemagus. “My daughter and I have been waiting for this day since the day Meleagant was born. We’re giving up the ranch and moving to West Virginia!”

“Why West Virginia?”

“He wants to eat an opossum,” said Cerise, with a measure of dry fondness in her voice. “Have a great day, you two. Thanks again.”

“Ta,” said Gawain. 

They stuck their feet on the other side of the Water Bridge, which Gringolet had jumped with no problem. It would have been enough time to get back to town, probably, but Lancelot had a blanket in his pack and there was something magical about late golden hour in the desert. So whie Gringolet wandered off to hunt birds, Lancelot and Gawain sat down on the shrubby gravelled ground and watched the wildlife frolic in the saguaros. 

“Success?” said Lancelot. He was feeling somewhat feverish, and if he pretended not to know why he would be lying. 

Gawain grinned at him. “Big success. We retrieved Gringolet, we liberated a weird old man and his awesome daughter, you got to kill an asshole… thank you for that, by the way. He might not have been Eric McLack but he sure did help rustle my beautiful perfect angelic horse.”

“No problem,” said Lancelot, his face beetroot red. “Anytime.”

“Anytime you’ll come with me to unrustle my horse or anytime you’ll saw a horse rustler’s head off?”

“Uh. Either.” 

A bird shrieked somewhere off to their left, which meant Gringolet had caught dinner for himself. Momentarily distracted, Lancelot cast his eyes around their setting. It was beautiful. He was a traitor to the Great Lakes, but nothing compared to the desert at the end of the day. The tips of the saguaros were dusted with pink flowers; the cholla were lovely when they weren’t attacking you; and the hedgehog cacti dotted the landscape with dashes of vibrant colour. Most striking of all of them was Gawain, his hair drifting down around his eyes and a strange look on his face. He hadn’t taken his gaze from Lancelot, and he was still looking at him _like that_ , like Lancelot was the most marvelous sight in the world. 

And suddenly everything clicked. Lancelot let out a huff of laughter. What did it matter, anyway? Guinevere was right. It would all be fine. “You’re not going to do anything, are you?”

“I do lots of things,” said Gawain easily. 

“I mean, you’re not going to say anything.”

“What?” Gawain said, staring at him, his eyes wide and-- _afraid_ , yes, afraid. 

Lancelot took a deep breath. “You’re my best friend, and I — I would kiss you if you asked me, and —”

“You would?” Gawain said, almost in a whisper. 

“Oh, god,” Lancelot said. He’d gotten it all wrong. Why would Gawain of all people want to kiss _him?_ What was he thinking? He was ready to run all the way back to Lake Superior when Gawain reached a hand out to stop him from rising in shame.

“No, I mean,” he said, bringing both hands to Lancelot’s shoulders. “I’m asking.” 

Lancelot blinked and took a moment to process, jaw hanging open slightly. “I—” he started, but gave up that train of thought in favor of pressing his mouth to Gawain’s. 

Kissing Gawain didn’t quite feel like Lancelot had expected, though in a good way. It didn’t feel rough or harsh — though he _could_ taste blood on one of their lips. It occurred to Lancelot that he was probably getting blood all over the both of them, which would have short-circuited his brain if it wasn’t already fried by the utterly disorienting pressure from Gawain’s mouth. 

He thought of all the times he’d imagined doing this. The scenarios in the morgue or in his bedroom or on top of the saloon roof couldn’t hold a candle to what was happening now. Blood-stained fingers found their way into Gawain’s hair. 

It was all motion, and more hands than Lancelot had thought (on his chest and his neck and _god_ , Gawain really knew what he was doing), and both their pulses pounding in his throat. _Yee-fucking-haw_ he thought. A low hum from Gawain vibrated against Lancelot’s lips. 

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” he whispered. “I’m-- God, I guess I’m a bit of a coward in the end, aren’t I?”

Lancelot laughed giddily. “That’s okay. I’m a bit weird myself. If you hadn’t realised.”

“I can more than live with your brand of weird,” said Gawain. His face was open and honest and smiling. He took Lancelot’s hand and kissed his palm, smoothing his fingers over Lancelot’s, who breathed out with a small shudder.

They stayed where they were, and the sunset rode towards them. 


End file.
